Missing Person's case file, Number 936-340, audio transcript of Hypnotherby Session.

I can only describe what happened. I don't know if I can tell you what happened.

You get it? When the snow starts the fall, we go up north to the cottage.

The usual crowd is coming. Three couples, two others. I'm in the other column. Me and

Marcus Stover, Stoveman, called him that since we were kids.

He's the third generation of men who sell wood-burning stoves to the cottages up north.

So Stoveman.

Stoveman and his family do really well. The cottage could fit 20 people comfortably, but I pack the tents anyway.

If the temperature holds, Stoveman and I will tent outside.

It better hold. I can't be inside. Don't want to be inside. Reminds me of her.

Darryl and Joanna, D.J. are already waiting.

The two of them hugging and leaning against their hatchback when Stoveman and I park at the end of the long gravel driveway.

DJ, because they're practically inseparable.

Ten years together and still attached to each other wherever they go.

Darrell is annoyingly handsome, the type of tall, bevy jock you hate immediately when you meet him, but then love five minutes later.

Fiercely loyal and once you get him rolling with laughter, it's hard not to join in.

He's got one of those high-pitched giggles, and he laughs at almost anything.

Joanna, the J. of DJ, is short, muscle-toned and whip-smart. She eyes me carefully.

I'm trying to hold it together, but everything around here reeks of her, literally. I smell it when I step out of the car. Pine. The towering evergreens

dominate the thick forest we're in, and I do what I can not to look at them.

Darryl comes in for the hug as he always does or Joanna simply nods and extends a hand.

She's still the only woman I know whose handshake crushes yours, no matter how hard you go in.

...